Microsoft will pay Novell USD 348 million up front, but Novell will return USD 200 million of that amount over five years. The specific numbers came in an a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission made by Novell late Tuesday. "The financial commitments Microsoft is making as part of this agreement are significant," company CEO Ron Hovsepian said in a statement. In related news, Microsoft has denied that its patent deal with Novell is in breach of the GPL or will automatically spread Microsoft's patent protection to other Linux distributions.

And that's the whole drub with Microsoft, they're not opposed to linux as much as they're opposed to the thought of enterprises truly embracing the concept of an OSS-driven software model where core technologies are commoditized and vendors differentiate over the level of service, support and innovation they can provide.

Microsoft is against all those who think closed sourse is automatically unethical (there are many on this site who support that idea).

Microsft is against those who wish to lie about the history of the internet (see my previous posts about Netscapes theft of Mosaic ang giving it away).

Microsoft is against those who wish to take away Microsoft market share by legislating the use of PDF/ODF claiming both are more "open" and "free" than Office - while ignoring PDF/ODF patents held by Adobe/Sun and would prefer to compete on the features in the software, not whether the software is part of the OSS cult.

Microsoft is against all those who think closed sourse is automatically unethical (there are many on this site who support that idea).

I think you're confusing closed source with closed standards, which to a certain extent are unethical because their sole raison d'etre is to eliminate choice and enforce lockin. I'm not aware of anyone in the real world that would sit there and call closed source unethical, and if you haven't figured it out yet this forum does not accurately depict the real world. Any more than the FSF does.

Microsft is against those who wish to lie about the history of the internet (see my previous posts about Netscapes theft of Mosaic ang giving it away).

I'm pretty sure you're the only one who's still hung up on this. I don't think Microsoft really gives a flying f!ck one way or the other.

Microsoft is against those who wish to take away Microsoft market share by legislating the use of PDF/ODF claiming both are more "open" and "free" than Office - while ignoring PDF/ODF patents held by Adobe/Sun and would prefer to compete on the features in the software, not whether the software is part of the OSS cult.

Microsoft is against governments suggesting their citizens should be able to view public documents now and in the future without having to pay for the privilege. You can bring up all the technicalities you want about the licensing of pdf, odf and openishXML, but at the end of the day only two of those three standards are useable on a wide variety of platforms without any requirement of special licensing or fees.

If Microsoft wants to put that one to rest, then they can state once and for all that openXML and the embedded binary formats that go with it for document presentation will be licensed for use by the OSS community. They have yet to, even with all the hubbub and FUD surrounding the debate. I don't care if they hold patents or not, as long as they refrain from exherting them. Right now the openXML is open argument holds as much water as Novell's assertion that mono is unencumbered; the core technology might be, but the little add-on bits that make it useable for it's intended purpose aren't. And the fact that MS has tied in openXML interoperability as part of this ambiguous agreement with Novell simply clouds the issue of openness even further IMHO.